whom heaven indeed must receive till [the] times of [the] restoring of all things, of which God has spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets since time began.
Peter is speaking in the temple, just after the healing of a lame man. He tells the crowd where Jesus is now, how long heaven will keep Him, and what will end that stay.
Peter's appeal here is not to individuals but to Israel as a nation. The world's future hangs on their answer.
A very remarkable overture was made to Israel that day in Solomon's porch. In Acts 2 Peter's appeal was to individuals. Those who responded were at once detached from "this crooked generation." In Acts 3 the same preacher's appeal was to the nation as such. He called on the people to repent and turn back to God. He promised that if they did, their sins would be blotted out, and that times of refreshing would come from the presence of the Lord. What is more, God would send back Jesus. The heavens had received Him until the times of the restoration of all things. Now it was for Israel to say whether that time of universal blessing should begin at once.
Older translations read "restitution" where the ESV has "restoring." Which period does Peter mean? The test is what all the prophets actually spoke about.
Has God spoken of the final judgment at the end of the world by the mouth of all His holy prophets? No. Certainly all the holy prophets of the old covenant have not spoken of it. What times, then, have they all spoken of? Plainly the millennial times — the times when all the nations of the earth will be brought under the Messiah's rule. The word translated "restitution" means restoring what has fallen into disorder, brokenness, and confusion.
Christ's absence from earth has a cause. Peter traces it to Israel.
Israel's sin had driven Him out of the world, and He was now in heaven. Earth can know no millennium of blessing while He stays away. His continuance in heaven, as Peter showed, depends on Israel's attitude toward Him. God chose that nation to be the centre of light and blessing for the earth. While it stays stubborn and unbelieving, Christ cannot return, and universal blessing cannot begin.
Some read the verse as if Christ waits in heaven while the world slowly improves. On this reading He arrives only at the end. The Greek will not allow it.
Heaven must receive Him till the times for restoring all things according to prophecy. That is, Jesus will be sent to bring in these blessed times when all things will be reconstituted — not destroyed — as the prophets of old testified. Christ will come from heaven to earth to establish millennial blessing. You would have to change the Greek completely to get the meaning "till all be accomplished." Christ is on high till the times of restoring all things come, not till all has been restored.
The phrase has been stretched to teach that everyone will finally be saved. Peter's own clause rules that out.
People have misused the term "restitution of all things" to back the idea that God will save and restore everybody in the end — even the devil himself. But the passage reads, "the restitution of all things, which God has spoken…" It is things, not persons — things He had spoken of by His prophets from the very start.
The same clause sets a second limit. It concerns people who die in their sins.
The restoration does not go beyond what "God has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets," and certainly no prophet tells us to look for the restoration to divine favour of men who have died in their sins. The prophets' standpoint was the earth. In stirring language they describe how God's power removes every scar that sin has caused. He does it so that He may once more have pleasure in the works of His hands, and that men may enjoy His mercy. The healing of the lame man was an example, strikingly illustrating Isaiah 35:5-6.
Every trust God placed in human hands has failed. The coming age answers the whole list.
Throughout the ages God has brought out before men many things that are His purpose for this world. He created Adam as head, and he sinned. He established government in Noah, and it was corrupted. He gave His law through Moses, and it was broken. He set up priesthood in Aaron, and it was perverted. He established kingly authority in David, and it collapsed. These things, and every other good thing in His purpose, will be restored in the coming age. And not only restored, but established in far greater fullness and in absolute perfection, because all will then be centred in Christ.
- Withheld — heaven keeps Christ while Israel stays unbelieving, and the earth waits with Him.
- Until — He stays above till those times begin, not till they are finished. His return opens the age; it does not close it.
- Things — God restores things, not persons. The verse gives no ground for saying every person will be saved in the end.
- Spoken — the prophets' words set the limit. The restoration reaches as far as they reach, and no further.
- Restored — headship, government, law, priesthood and kingship all broke in human hands. Christ recovers them all and perfects them.
Moses indeed said, A prophet shall [the] Lord your God raise up to you out of your brethren like me him shall ye hear in everything whatsoever he shall say to you.
Peter is preaching to the men of Israel. To show them that Jesus is the one they had waited for, he does not start with something new. He quotes Moses.
Peter's argument gains its force from who said it.
God has fulfilled His word through Moses the prophet. Moses in no way took the place of being Israel's deliverer. He was only a witness to it, a partial display of God's power at the time, but looking on to the great Prophet and Deliverer who was coming. Now He had come.
The promise did not appear out of nowhere. It answered something Israel had asked for.
The prophets of idolatry were deluded. In contrast, the Lord would raise up a prophet like Moses — but infinitely greater than Moses — from among Israel. Israel must listen to Him. Moses was about to die. But God remembered Israel's fear at Sinai. They were terrified at the thought of hearing God Himself speak, and had asked for someone to stand between them and God. So the Prophet spoken of is the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."
The phrase "from your brothers" points to someone truly human, standing among the people He speaks to.
Peter's use of these words in Acts 3 makes it clear that the One in mind is Christ Himself. In Deuteronomy 18 the stress seems to fall on the precious fact of Christ's humanity — "a prophet like me from your brothers." Perhaps the outstanding feature in Moses was the closeness he enjoyed with God, and his freedom in going into the Lord's presence. The words "like me" remind us of the perfect communion between the Lord Jesus as Man and the Father.
The fit is exact, and history has produced no rival:
Peter quotes Moses: God would raise up a prophet from the Jewish nation, similar to Moses. But He would speak with such authority that no one could ignore His words... This could apply to no one but Christ. Leaders in Israel knew that Scripture. They had asked John the Baptist whether he was that prophet. But John testified that the Lord Jesus was far greater than he, and the evidence of Christ's own life and ministry was clear for all to see... In fact, Israel knows that neither before nor since has there been such a prophet.
Some have tried to attach this promise to other men, or to spread it over a whole line of prophets. Kelly tests each idea against the wording.
The theory of Aben Ezra and others, that Joshua is meant, cannot stand. Joshua only added to Moses' work, and in little more than one direction. He does not stand out in any adequate way as the prophet raised up from his brothers like Moses. So some of the most distinguished Jewish teachers tried to read this one unique prophet as a whole line of prophets! That reading fits neither the language nor the facts of their history... The place of mediator, whose words must be heard on pain of death, points to what marked Moses out. In the highest degree it is true of no one but the Messiah.
The command attached to the Prophet has no limits in it. Moses had delivered a law; this Prophet opens something wider.
Moses had predicted the coming of a prophet — a man like himself, to whom the nation must listen or be destroyed. Jesus fulfilled this prophecy. Though He is the Eternal Son, He stooped to become Man among us — as truly human as Moses or anyone else. He was no mere explainer of Moses' law. He announced a new and more glorious order of things altogether. The words themselves show it: "You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you."
The command to listen still stands. Fereday points to where the Prophet's words can be found.
The Prophet is Christ. He has come. Men have heard His voice with their own ears, and we may still hear His voice in Holy Scripture. Here is one of His sayings: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." What words are these! How divinely suited they are to meet every need of the human heart!
- Promised — Moses never claimed to be Israel's deliverer. He was a witness pointing forward to the greater Prophet still to come.
- Provided — At Sinai, Israel asked for someone to stand between them and God. The promise answered them, and Christ Jesus is that one mediator between God and men.
- Person — "A prophet like me from your brothers" marks out real humanity. No one else fits — not Joshua, not a line of prophets. Only the Messiah is the mediator whose words must be heard on pain of death.
- Priority — He does not merely explain Moses' law. He announces something new, and we owe Him a hearing in whatever He says.
- Present — That voice is still heard in Scripture, and its words meet the need of the human heart today.
And it shall be that whatsoever soul shall not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people.
Peter has just offered his listeners forgiveness and the return of their Messiah. Now he quotes Moses, and the offer comes with a warning: everything turns on whether people listen to the Prophet God raised up.
Peter did not invent this threat. He took it from Moses — the very lawgiver his hearers claimed to follow.
God has fulfilled His word through Moses the prophet. Moses never took the place of Israel's deliverer. He was only a witness to it — a partial picture of God's power at that time, pointing on to the great Prophet and Deliverer who was coming. Now He had come. So Peter set before them the arrival of the One who came to bless, His rejection among them, and how terrible a thing it is to treat that lightly. Whoever would not bow to Him was to be cut off — by the declaration of their own Moses.
Their defence was that they followed Moses. That defence collapses.
So by refusing to listen to Christ, they were guilty of direct disobedience to Moses. The lawgiver would be their accuser. The people who claimed to be Moses' disciples, so eager (as they imagined) for his honour, would find themselves accused before God by him!
The threat is this heavy because of who the Prophet is. Moses did not promise another teacher of the old system. He promised the start of something new.
Moses had declared that Jehovah would raise up for them a Prophet like himself. He firmly affirms this Prophet's authority. He is not a mere explainer of what had been spoken before. He is the Originator of a new order of things, as Moses was, and so must go beyond what Moses had begun... Had Moses been enough, there would have been no need for another. But the law was bound to fail to bring people near to God. There must be, then, another Prophet and a different message. If people hear Him, the way to God that is otherwise closed opens for the one who receives His message. If they do not hear Him, there is indeed no remedy: "every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people."
Only one thing was asked of Israel: listen to Him. Their own great creed began with the word "Hear" — and still they did not.
Israel boasted in their great "Shema," where the prophet Moses called them back to the privilege and responsibility of what the law revealed... But Israel was the "deaf servant" of Jehovah. Now God had raised up another Prophet, and of Him it was written, "You shall listen to Him in everything He says to you"... Moses had charged the people, "Hear, O Israel." Now One greater than Moses cried, "Who has ears to hear, let him hear." What if they did not hear? For those who refused to listen, that old prophecy held a warning just as serious: "whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him."
The wording in Acts is sharper still. Moses said God would require it of the man; Peter says the soul is "destroyed from the people."
One writer checks the Greek word behind "destroyed," and a related noun, in a standard Greek dictionary.
The first of these words occurs only once (Acts 3:23). The second appears four times — three of them about the destruction of the ungodly. Liddell and Scott give exolothreuo as "to destroy utterly," and olethros as "ruin, destruction, death."
The warning is personal. It sets two outcomes before every hearer.
See how serious the issues are that hang on hearing the voice of this Prophet... Everything depends, he says, on how you hear Him. To hear Jesus is to secure salvation. To deafen the ear and harden the heart against Him is to seal the soul's eternal doom.
The warning is not the whole sermon. Israel still had a future to wait for, and a duty in the present.
There was, however, a word for them in the present. The One who had been among them was truly the Prophet like Moses, to whom all were to listen. So a present responsibility rested on them while they waited for the future. For if that Prophet had come — and Jesus Christ was that Prophet — then all people were bound to listen to Him, or judgment would overtake the rebellious.
- Promised — Moses foretold a Prophet like himself. Refuse that Prophet, and Moses himself becomes your accuser.
- Greater — He does not just explain the old order. He opens the way to God that was closed, and refusing Him leaves "no remedy."
- Heard — the one thing required is listening. Israel recited "Hear, O Israel" and stayed the deaf servant.
- Destroyed — this verb appears only here in the New Testament, and it means "to destroy utterly."
- Offered — the warning sits inside an offer. The duty now is to listen to Him, before judgment falls.
And indeed all the prophets from Samuel and those in succession after [him], as many as have spoken, have announced also these days.
Peter is still speaking in the temple after the healing of a lame man, and he has just pressed Moses' words about a Prophet whom Israel must hear. Now he widens the appeal. Every prophet from Samuel onward spoke of the days his hearers were living in. Two questions follow: why the count begins at Samuel, and which days are meant.
Samuel is not named at random. One writer asks why, and finds the answer in what had collapsed in Israel — both the people and the priesthood.
Why "from Samuel"? Where was the great fitness in that? What moral reason led the Spirit of God to tie prophecy to Samuel's place? The people had failed completely long before. The priests were now just as plainly a failure... What remained to be done? No one is holy like the LORD; He is the One who never fails. But how does He act? Samuel and the prophets after him are the turning point. There the announcement of His Anointed as king first begins to dawn on Israel.
Peter starts the line at Samuel. That does not mean prophecy began there.
He was the first of the "successional prophets" (Acts 13:20; 3:24). Yet Moses, and even Abraham, were prophets before him (Psalm 105:15; Deuteronomy 18:18).
Prophets arrive when something has broken down. Their message then runs in two directions at once.
Prophecy is a special intervention, and it applied to their case of failure. So when Shiloh fell and the ark was captured, God raised up Samuel. That is why the Lord counts the prophets "from Samuel and those who came after him."... But while they showed the people their sins, they kept pointing to the Messiah, the great Deliverer... Prophecy judges the people in their responsibility. It also announces the sovereign purpose of God.
Commentators differ on what "these days" means. One reading ties them to the peace and blessing Peter offers if the nation repents.
Here Peter is still urging them to repent. If they do, he pledges the return of Christ to bring in the predicted time of peace and blessing. For Jesus was clearly the Prophet raised up, like Moses but far greater, as Moses himself testified in Deuteronomy 18:15. No one could refuse His words and escape; to refuse them was to bring on his own destruction.
Another writer takes the two phrases in Peter's speech as two different periods.
Again and again we gather that all the prophets bore witness to the sufferings of Christ. They spoke of the present interval of testimony to Him, rejected and glorified, under the title of "These days," and of the future glory as "Times of refreshing."
The verse sits inside an offer. Peter tells a nation that has just killed its Messiah that God offers to send Him back.
All the prophets from Samuel onward had pointed to His day. Israel was privileged indeed: first the prophets in long succession, and at last the Son of God Himself speaking among them. And now, despite their killing of Him, God proposed to give Him to them a second time. So blessing — full and final — would come in, not for Israel only, but for all the nations of the earth. Alas for the hopeless evil of the human heart! The gracious offer was refused. So the world drags on, century after century, in its weary way. It feels its need of peace and rest more deeply all the time, yet never finds it. The rejected Jesus is the only true hope people have, if only they could see it.
Peter is not laying out history. He is proving that the Prophet Moses named has come.
That Jesus was this Prophet is plain. Peter goes on to say, "And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days." Everything depends, he says, on how you hear Him. Nothing could be plainer. To hear Jesus is to secure salvation. To close the ear and harden the heart against Him is to seal the soul's eternal doom.
- Failure — Peter dates prophecy from Samuel because that is where people and priesthood both broke down. God answered the ruin by pointing to His Anointed.
- Succession — Samuel was not the first prophet of all. He was the first of the unbroken line, so "from Samuel" traces a chain, not a start.
- Two voices — Every prophet in that chain did the same double work. They exposed sin, and they named the Deliverer to come.
- These days — The whole line pointed to the days Peter's hearers were standing in. Commentators differ on whether that means the present time of testimony or the promised season of blessing.
- Decision — All this witness leaves one question. Will you hear this Prophet? Salvation and ruin hang on your answer.